The course
After 60 km traveled through the caterpillar and Adventalen Sassendalen, we are deposited at the gates of Sabineland (Sir Edward Sabine 1788-1883) exactly at the foot of the glacier Rabotbreen . The rise of this glacier will lead us on the Nordmannsfonna, vast icecap peak at 600 m altitude. After his voyage to the south we cross a small pass and then dives on Isrosa by the Vaeringsdalen we reach the bottom of the Bay Agardhbukta. Journey on the ice to Cape Revnosa before returning by Agardhdalen. We cross the neck and forehead of glacaire Elfenbeinbreen then by the lake and the valley of Jokulvatnet Fulmardalen we find our point of removal.
Review: Area 11 days, 10 days of sunny weather one day and then covered milky and a little snow. Temperatures -18 / - 25 with a peak at -31, one day thaw at -10 degrés.
En remontant le Rabotbreen
Le froid
Quittant la douceur d’une chenillette surchauffée, nous voilà déposé au pied du glacier du Rabotbreen et dès lors littéralement plongé pour une dizaine de jour dans une atmosphère pour le moins glaciale. Le thermomètre vas osciller constamment entre –18 et –25 degrés, pour ne connaître qu’un jour de « redoux » à –10 degrés.
Le froid n’a pas cette agressivité to which one might expect at first but it takes your body maliciously, with the firmness of a long handshake that crushes you gradually wrist and you're having more to get rid. Therefore you enter the world of convicts, sentenced to réinveter every minute or more to become the perpetual motion. This movement wholesome producer of calories that you can live, sometimes survive, hugged in a real straitjacket. Condemned by the fact that the temperature will leave you no respite, no pause. The time to agree a stop to eat, and yet hold his coat down, as you already pointed to the march, assembling or dismantling of the camp to install the mess tent, or any other occupation that you are active in healthy blood flow and heat source.
Thus it mildly group that gathered in the mess tent, while the stove is required to melt the snow, cook or drink water used to rehydrate the freeze-dried meals, there is here a kind of refuge, a sweetness, even a semblance of heat for a little as the sun beaming down on the canvas. Moments for the exchange, the déconnade frank, friendly moments with it comes to taking the measure, if one wants to stick to the roadmap.
Wind
Not the real enemy is the wind, and his aggressiveness on your body is exponential, depending on its strength and room temperature.
For example, -20 degrees and a breeze of 20 km / h, the wind chill down to -30 degrees. With -25 degrees and winds of 40 km / h, the wind chill plunged to -40 degrees.
And as such we have experienced an almost constant wind. Relatively low in funds de vallée, il s’est montré plutôt vigoureux et même tempétueux dès que l’on a gagné de l’altitude.
Alors que l’équation :
C= MP ..... où c=chaleur et MP=mouvement perpétuel pour en produire,
avec un vent de 40 km/h et –20 degrés, l’équation se resume à :
CS= MC ..... où c/s = chaleur pour survivre et où MC = Marche ou crève !
Vêtu de souliers appropriés à ces région, de 2 couches pour le bas et de 4 couches + veste pour le haut, une cagoule, un bonnet, une capuche, masque de ski, et masque facial, il ne reste plus que mouth exposed to fresh air for breathing totally free, it does not pose any problem surprisingly frostbite.
On Nordmannsfonna
Gale on Nordmannsfonna
On Day 3, leaving the Rabotbreen we ascend slowly from the shell glacaire Nordmannsfonna. The relatively gentle slope has some jumps that we take the measure while the weight of the pulka is felt most keenly. The air is frigid, the wind is moderate beating us happily back. Few brief pauses allow us to swallow cereal bars or fruit pulp, on which we must be careful not to break teeth, while being frozen and therefore without much flavor. We go round the top gently with a dome that will allow us to begin a long traverse of the ice to the south, where the image of a big swell successive domes and valleys. All without references and without any shelter.
At the top of the dome light is lost forever!
The wind takes us once abeam and a vague sastrugi the hillside, kinds of waves of snow sharp and brittle, shaped by wind, are beginning to go after our pulkas. The recent reversals soon n'épargent person, which require each time a burst of energy to put them back flat. Imperceptibly the wind became stronger by the hour or the snow to the point raised limited horizon. Soon we see at 50 meters. The pulkas lie endlessly on the side, putting the aisles with some lively and provoking rant well inside, so we do not agree with his neighbor. The situtation worse yet, our guide decided to put up camp here property to construct a snow wall to protect the tents and set up 3 tents in which we live 3 by 3. By
as strong winds, poor visibility as the exercise is a bit of a challenge. The snow wall is closing almost as fast as it adds height, and the tents, it is to be as fast as conscientious and methodical. Not about to let fly a painting or cross their bows. Michael ensures that a master hand, and tent after tent, each of us may soon get away, cold and tired transit. In the din of the canvas battered by the wind, each team then activated to heat water, to swallow his lypohilisé to consume calories as you can not imagine the amount that you must burn with such conditions. The night will go well in the narrow fabric tight against each other, in the roar of winds rushing to the assault of our tents. Feeling strange and paradoxical to find safe and under canvas so ridiculous, and worried at the same time of such vulnerability, as it is here completely exposed to the elements. The hours pass and the wind did not abate much before noon. Out of our shelters once the elements somewhat calmed down, we discover what our camp buried under a yoke of snow, our wall almost filled by it.
NB / The same day he was measured up to 50 knots of wind at Longyearbyen (90 kph). In our position we have estimated a steady wind at 60 km / h with peaks between 70 and 80 km / h. For a temperature of - 20 at the time, the wind chill hovered therefore between - 35 and - 40 ° C. ..).
Camp fortune after the gale
The inner journey
Similarly equipped, you become like the diver, a little deaf in the world, you impose the wind you stick to your neighbor to exchange a few words. Restricted visual field, you walk and your towing pulka like an automaton, fixing the pulka ass in front of you. Imperceptibly you leave your body and your soul that it grabs you, the beauty of the landscape, and hostility arridité places give you this strange sensation of an extraordinary journey, timeless. Already flies from your eyes in ice caps, sea ice short, round the Cape, fled farther and farther, you run to infinity. You free ... be free! It's so easy to fly ...!
Hostility outer - inner fold
to run the immensity of a frozen desert!
Polar bears (Ursus maritimus!)
Going to Svalbard, it is obviously exposed to encounter polar bears. If the risk is virtually nonexistent within land or on ice caps (a few misguided individuals or transit times), it is not the same on the coast, this being especially true if you walk on the ice field of choice of bears to hunt seals.
By going on the ice of the East Coast, the America we know and if the encounter with this animal emblematic hopefully within us, it remains that the fear we live, As it is true that on these isolated areas, carry our skis and a poor weapon altogether ridiculous, you feel really helpless. Add to this precarious our camp, nestled in our yard surrounded by the "ball bear," alarm in case of unexpected intrusion of the predator. Experience of its operation rather random, then how to react in case of alarm about the bear sniffing your canvas! Even in -25 degrees, it should hardly be simpler to keep his cool.
If luck does not smile, however it allowed us to live bivouacs and serene nights, without the need to add to our precarious life guard towers at night.
And yet the beast was not far away, crossing a little farther north by another group (a mother and her cub) forcing them to greater attention and guard towers. Moreover, when we crossed on the ice, about twenty miles further south on the yacht "Wanderer," the skipper discovered a bear lying beside one of their dogs that had eaten.
Raid on the ice
Conquest ephemeral - in two months everything will be as water and seascape!
^ 
Moonscape at a pass
Walk on Water!
Meet the Ursus maritimus manu tricotus - Cousin totally innocent polar bears!
